


Same Old, Same Old

by carriecmoney



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:59:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1850434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carriecmoney/pseuds/carriecmoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘Cause do I love you // Oh, I do // And I’m going to ‘til I’m gone // But if you think that I can stay in this // same old, same old // Well, I don’t //<br/>A study in polyamory starring Reiner, Annie, and Bertl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same Old, Same Old

**Author's Note:**

> {A/N: Brought about by my first time moving and The Civil Wars' self-titled album. Title and summary lyrics from [this song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63ci8hHX_p8&feature=kp) [tumblr link](http://carriecmoney.tumblr.com/post/89966115426)}

The only lonely guy at the bar was too tall for his posture, hunched in like he was sorry for being over six feet and desperately trying to shrink into his beer. But he also looked scared and lonely, so Reiner put on his best smile and sat down next to him.

“Hey.” The stranger started, just a bit, and looked up at Reiner. He had too bottle green eyes for his pottery complexion, basset hound sad and Reiner’s intended pickup line died in his teeth. “You okay?”

He shrugged, sharp, and turned back to his beer bubbles. “I’ve been better.”

Reiner frowned. “Need an ear? I can be a good listener.”

He smiled, no teeth no humor. “I better not.”

“C’mon, I won’t tell anyone. Here, I’ll get the next round.”

He choked on the beer he was swallowing. “No, don’t, I’m fine-”

“Uh huh, sure you are.” Reiner waved at the bartender and pointed two fingers at them. She nodded and turned to comply. “We can start with names. I’m Reiner.”

He smiled, eyes still droopy. “Bertl.” His tongue rolled on the ‘l’, throaty and different, and it rolled right on down Reiner’s spine.

“That’s a good name.” Reiner pressed his knee to Bertl’s under the bar. He jerked away.

Bertl’s eyes went wide at the affronted grunt Reiner couldn’t hide. “No, no, it’s just that… I have a girlfriend.”

Reiner blinked at him, not even acknowledging the bartender setting down their drinks. “Bertl. This is a _gay bar_.”

Bertl groaned and put his big hands on top of his head. “I _know_.”

Reiner frowned. “Dude, you can’t live a lie, especially when there’s someone else involved-”

Bertl shook his head. “No, she knows, this was her idea.” He sighed and finished off his first beer before reaching for the fresh one. “We’ve not been doing so hot for a while. It’s just… something’s not there. So we’ve been trying new things, going out alone like this. But…” He trailed off. Reiner watched his face play out. _Not enough._

When he pressed his knee to Bertl’s a second time, he didn’t flinch away.

* * *

Reiner woke up first the next morning when the air conditioner kicked on, Bertl sloth-draped around his tree trunk chest. He moaned and closed his eyes, but sleep was blown away and caffeine withdrawal was taking its place.

He sniffed the air – wait.

Carefully, tenderly, he extracted himself from Bertl’s hold and slipped out of the bed – the spare, from how bare the room was besides it and last night’s clothes. He found his boxers and undershirt and hopped into them before opening the door, stepping into the kitchen he vaguely remembered passing through the night before.

Now it was lit by the slanting morning sun, soft whites and greys, and there was a person in it. He stopped and stared.

Annie (Bertl had mentioned her name a few times) was almost comically short next to them, a slip of a human with her blonde hair pinned straight up behind her head and still didn’t reach Reiner’s elbow. She was pouring out coffee – two cups.

“How do you take it?” she asked, not looking up.

“Uh. Black is fine.” She nodded once and slid a cup down the counter. He approached it warily, but she didn’t bite him, so he took it and leant against the counter next to her, joining her communion with the window across the room.

“I’m guessing Bertl told you about me.”

“A bit.” He paused. “Is that… okay?”

She shrugged and sipped her coffee. They listened to the early traffic buzz by three stories below, unsoftened caffeine mixing with stale apartment and stale sex – that was Reiner.

“Y’know, you’re the first one he’s brought home.”

Reiner gulped the mouthful of coffee he’d just taken in. “Really?” She nodded, once. “Oh.”

She glanced at him side long, a dirty look without a trace of malice. “How much do you bench?”

“Uh. Four hundred, on a good day.”

She pushed off the counter and patted his arm. “You’ll do.”

* * *

Before he left, he somehow managed to get both their numbers, a spare sweatshirt, a kiss on the cheek from Annie, and (another) elevator kiss from Bertl as he walked him out. He spent the rest of his Saturday in a foggy haze, and before dark was texting both of them about… stuff. Just odds and ends. When nine o’clock hit and they were still talking about giraffes, he gave up on going out and just went to their place instead.

They didn’t even have sex, just curled up in a puddle on the couch and watched TV movies. It was the best Saturday Reiner could remember spending. He could make a habit out of this.

* * *

A week later, Annie called him at work.

“What’s up, doll?”

“ _Do you have a tux?_ ”

Reiner paused while shuffling through his monthly client schedule. “No, but I know a place that has my size. Why?”

“ _I have a black tie event at the museum tomorrow night, and Bertl hates these things._ ”

Reiner smiled and flipped to tomorrow. “When should I be there?”

* * *

Annie told the first couple who asked about her newest arm candy that it was her boyfriend Reiner. And that was that.

He kept a hand on her all night. Her dress was dark blue satin and slipped under his calluses, and her skin was unusually soft for someone who spent half of her life managing modern art sculpture inventory and the other half punching trees.

His hand slid from between her shoulder blades down to the small of her back. He wasn’t typically a skirt chaser, but he wanted that dress _off_. He bent down, thumb hooking in the waistline. “I hope I don’t hurt this too much when we get back.”

The corners of her mouth crinkled around the lip of her champagne flute. “As long as you leave the lingerie alone. Bertl called dibs.” She ducked away to the refreshment table, leaving him grasping at air and gaping at a collage made of broken glass and coat hangers.

* * *

Reiner didn’t know this, but they laughed more with him around. Their two bedroom apartment, once so quiet that the birds nesting in the pockmarked exterior were louder, now rang with Reiner’s boom, Bertl’s chuckles, and Annie’s occasional hiccup. Now, it wasn’t uncommon for them to end up, breathlessly silly, in a heap on the kitchen floor, for no reason at all, really. The latest reason was a bad joke about the word origins of bodily functions. Reiner had his hand on Annie’s side (it swamped her stomach), fingers digging for purchase against his laughter. She squirmed. And he grinned.

“Why, fair lady, are you ticklish?”

“No, of course not.”

“She is,” Bertl stage-whispered. (He wasn’t.)

“Traitor- _ah!_ ” Reiner’s hands dug into (they encompassed) her sides, wiggling and extracting her rare full laughs, choking and silent. She fell back into his chest, legs barely straight, and Bertl bent down(down) to scratch at the back of her knees. She crumpled, only held up by Reiner. He stopped and kissed her ear. She hummed, still gasping, and tilted her neck to him as his lips trailed down.

Bertl knelt in front of her now, shirt rucked up over his nose as he trailed faint kisses over her stomach. She squirmed. Bertl’s eyes glinted up at them.

“Stop, stop, stop- _ah!_ ”

* * *

Bertl and Annie met in middle school, when the new girl and the tallest kid in the class got paired up in gym for one-on-one basketball on the first day of seventh grade as a joke. Annie beat the shorts off of him. (It helped that, despite his height, he’d always been awful at basketball.) He’d been infatuated with her clever eyes and cleaver nose ever since. It took Annie until college to warm up to him. He hadn’t _quite_ followed her to their university – it had a good civil engineering program, and he wanted to build cities ~~tear them apart~~ – but her full ride on her gymnast’s scholarship did factor in.

She ignored him. She’d been ignoring him for years; it was habit by now.

Until he blew up the fountain in front of the architecture building.

She’d been passing by when it happened, watched the bubbling water get sucked down and explode out, granite shattering into brick and through glass. Shouts and screams echoed, upper story windows opened, students and professors alike caught in shock at the carnage that had once been an obscure homage to the founding president of the university.

In the middle of it all and a little to the side cowered Bertl, hands over his head and shaking.

Annie snorted and marched up to him, yanking his arms away and forcing him to look at her. No blood. A pocket in her chest relaxed.

“’Lo, Annie.” He grinned despite his trembling. “I guess it worked.”

“What.”

He rattled on about chemicals and lab testing and toilets in the backyard. She slapped a hand over his mouth. “You did this.”

“Well. Yeah.”

Her eyes darted around to the chaos of the architecture courtyard. “You’re going to be _expelled_.”

“I was failing statistics, anyway.”

She snorted, then hiccuped. “Since when were you a demolitions expert?”

“Since the block of sodium in second grade.” He straightened to his full height, a tree to her shade, and smiled at his handiwork. She pressed two fingers to her mouth and contemplated the gurgling remnants of the fountain. If this experiment wasn’t a fluke, she’d have some relatives interested in him, degree or no degree.

“I hated that statue. It had no form.”

“Yeah. I know.”

She snapped a look up at him. “You know you should probably run right now, right?”

He shrugged. “No one ever suspects me. Hadn’t you figured that out yet?”

“Hmph.” She hooked her hand around his elbow. “C’mon. I’ll buy you hot chocolate.”

He smiled. “Sure, Annie.”

* * *

“Dude, where have you _been?_ ”

Reiner turned from making his morning protein shake to his roommate Jean, who had his arms crossed over his bare chest and was leaning in his bedroom’s door. “This is the first time I’ve seen you in, like, two weeks. Spill. Did you join a gang?”

Reiner snorted and held down the lid of the blender. “No, Jean, that’s not what happened.”

“But something _did_ happen. Obviously.” Reiner turned on the blender, and Jean crossed over to yell over it better, hair still sleep-tossed. “If you’re moving out, you should just say so.”

The blender screeched to a halt. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

Jean snorted. “Well, you should. You’ve been here so little this past month I could probably take you off the lease and be fine.” He caught the edge of a bruise on Reiner’s collar and narrowed his eyes at it. “You got a boyfriend.”

“And a girlfriend.” Jean recoiled, nose wrinkled. Reiner laughed and poured his rather chunky shake out. “It’s… complicated.” It wasn’t, not to them, but it was hard to explain. “I’ve been at their place, mostly.”

“Huh.” Jean backed off and started his coffee. “So, do I need to look for another body for your room?”

“Not yet.” Reiner took a long pull of his shake. “But keep your ears open.”

* * *

It had been four months since Reiner sat down next to Bertl at the bar and asked if he was okay. Four months since Annie first appraised him and said he’d do. It’d been two months since Jean put the bug in his head to move out and in. It’d been a week since he’d shared that bug with the others.

He was wrapping up a Wednesday training session with one of his long-time clients, Erwin, built like he’d be in a few decades if he lost an arm. “Hey, you do real estate, right?”

Erwin nodded from under his towel. “Mostly commercial, though.” He arched a thick eyebrow at him. “Why the interest?”

Reiner swallowed. “I think I want a house.”

Erwin smiled, nodded, stood from the bench he’d been sitting on. “I think I can help.”

* * *

Two months after that, Reiner drove deep into the bowels of the suburbs in the biggest U-Haul they could find, Bertl and Annie trailing after him with his and their cars. They stopped at 1551 Perch St, a little yellow house with a screened front porch and an oak tree dripping ivy in the back. Reiner parked and swung out of the passenger side onto the sidewalk. It was a heavy heat sort of day, pressing all the water out of them and back into the saturated air. He breathed it in.

Bertl slid up beside him. “I like it.”

Reiner grinned at him and slung an arm around his neck, clunking their foreheads together. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Bertl’s hound dog eyes narrowed, cactus green in the sunshine, teeth barely showing in his smile.

Annie sighed loudly beside Reiner’s was-empty other side. He twisted to grab her and pull her in, all three of them contemplating the house. _Their_ house. “It’ll do.”


End file.
